In current conventional photographic film applications, a roll of light sensitive film having a predetermined number of exposures is selectively exposed to incident light for capturing an image to each exposure. The exposed film is processed by a photofinisher for creating photographic prints from the exposed film, and also for converting the exposed film into non-light sensitive negatives which the consumer may later use for ordering additional prints. The photographic negatives are usually in the form of strips.
When ordering additional photographic prints of interest from the negative strip, the consumer must identify the negative that produced the print of interest to the photofinisher. Unfortunately, photographic negatives are not readily viewable by the human eye, and it can be extremely difficult to identify which negative belongs with a print of interest, particularly in cases in which several almost identical exposures were taken in very rapid succession. Therefore, it is desirable to provide an index print that contains photographic images, preferably reduced in size, each having a number corresponding to a particular image frame on the negative. This permits a consumer to readily identify which negative belongs to the print of interest.
Several systems have been developed for generating index prints during the initial photofinishing process. Typical of such systems is commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,184,227 issued to Foley, for example, discloses a photographic printer with an index print generator. The printer includes a scanning device for sequentially and electronically scanning a roll of negatives as they are processed by the photographic printer. The digitized image data generated by the scanning device is supplied to an exposure determination computer that controls the operation of an optical printer light source to print the photographic negatives. In addition, the digitized image data is supplied to an index print generator that prints reduced size positive images on an index sheet using a hardcopy output printer. A corresponding index number identifying each negative frame is printed beside each positive image on the index sheet so the consumer can readily identify which negative frame belongs to which positive image.
Although the presently known and utilized systems and methods are satisfactorily, they are not without drawbacks. The index prints are typically generated during the initial photofinishing process. This requires the consumer to decide whether to generate index prints during the this initial photofinishing process which may be days, months or even years before it is actually known if index prints are needed. If it is later decided that they are not needed, obviously an un-recoverable expenditure has already occurred. In addition, the method and system for generating index prints are difficult, time consuming, labor intensive and expensive because each frame image is sequentially scanned during the printing process.
Consequently, a need exists for improvements in the system and mode of generating index prints so as to overcome the above-described drawbacks.